Genma's Diary
by N. Reynolds
Summary: An attempt to explain the original Ranma storyline, with Genma as a brave, intelligent, caring parent. Hopefully wry humor, and twisted ideas. A smart Genma, acting like an idiot, trying to act smart.


Dear Diary:  
  
Soun started hinting again about getting Ranma and Akane married. It's a good thing he's as clever as the master is considerate. I almost can't believe that he agreed to try a plan that was essentially the same as one that failed twice before.  
  
Even if the others don't screw it up like before, even if Soun manages to prevent it from failing like all of the other times, I can sabotage it as I planned to do the first time. Luckily I haven't had to do that yet. It always makes me look dim when I have to sabotage my own plans.  
  
Luckily the dim ones can't figure anything out, and the clever ones like Kasumi and Nabiki believe they're too clever to be tricked by an idiot like me. Unfortunately my son falls between the two classifications. In spite of everything I've done, he can't seem to use his brain on anything other than martial arts. Still between his genius and his imbecility, he's the most likely to catch on.  
  
As if I ever wanted Ranma to marry such an emotional cripple as Soun's children. And Akane is the worst. Unfortunately she's the kind of girl Ranma would fall for. I had to make her the preferred fiancee, and even with that, there's still a chance he might actually marry her.  
  
If he does decide she's the one he wants to marry, I'll have to take that fool on a training trip, and try to fix some of her most grievous faults before she marries my precious son. The other girls are better, but still pretty bad. I always knew this would be the biggest risk in my plans. Gods I wish he'd meet some halfway sane girl so I could forbid him from spending time with her.  
  
Only a few more years of this nonsense and I'll be able to safely fake my own death, and return as the kindly, wise uncle. I wonder if Ranma will ever forgive me. Sons start by loving their father; later on they judge them; few ever forgive them.  
  
Dear Diary:  
  
Sometimes I really despair over the inherent stupidity of people. The willful blindness people wrap themselves in, in order to preserve their precious flawed images of reality.  
  
Take, for example, Soun. Doesn't he remember that he tried to drug me as well as get me drunk in order to trick me into agreeing to marry Ranma to one of his daughters? Not once has he asked why I'm so adamant that Ranma marry a Tendo. I'm acting so over the top, that Soun has had to lecture me to stop forcing Ranma, and Soun has not once thought about how there's no reason in the world I would really want Ranma to marry one of his daughters.  
  
Nabiki and Kasumi both blindly accept that I want Ranma to inherit the dojo. Both of them ignore the fact that even Ranma realizes a dojo is superfluous. Both of them think all I want is a life of ease, as if a truly lazy bastard would have dragged his son across half of creation. Both of them think I left Nodoka because I loved life on the road, and then they think I want Ranma to settle down so that I no longer have to live on the road.  
  
Ranma is too close to the problem to think about it. But even he should have some idea that there's something fishy about the whole thing. Well if my life were as hectic as his, I'd be bound to miss a few things too.  
  
Akane is too blinded by rage to think straight about anything. She's worse than those idiots Ryouga and Tatewaki. Luckily the cultural differences prevent the Amazon contingent from paying too close attention to my motives.  
  
Dear Diary:  
  
God, I thought Happosai was a sexist pig. Now I know where he learned it from. I'd be willing to bet he picked it up while living with those Amazons. Cologne is old enough to know better of course, but even her first opinion of males is that they're worthless unless proven otherwise. Mousse is going to grow up to be as bad as Happosai, and Shampoo blindly accepts that she's the best because she's a female Amazon.  
  
I realized I'd screwed up with Ranma when he still thought girls were worthless when he entered his teens. Luckily I knew about Jhusenkyou and its cures. But even with him living as a girl, and with me splashing him all the time, he's way too sexist for my taste. I'd like to cure Ranma before I fake my death, but it looks like he may need to keep the curse longer.  
  
I thought that being a rabid misogynist and taking Ranma to various countries so that he could see firsthand that cultural prejudices against females were pointless, that Ranma would realize that while the differences in abilities between men and women were obviously there, that they mattered less than the differences between individuals regardless of gender.  
  
Well he's finally learned that women tend to be more flexible while men tend to have more upper body strength, but he's still a sexist pig. I still have to make sure that I don't act so much like an idiot around smarter women like Kasumi to the point where Ranma starts thinking all men are inherently dumber.  
  
Soun's no help at all, dismissing his daughters as fragile incompetents, while it takes a substantial effort from two of his daughters to keep him from screwing up his own life even further. Luckily Akane is so stupid, as her imbecility allows me to act like a total buffoon, and still not appear extraordinary.  
  
Also Dr. Tofu would be an ideal role model for Ranma in terms of intelligence and inter-gender understanding if only he didn't act like such a fool around Kasumi. I've considered trying to break him of that, but the emotional damage to Kasumi and him would be too great while other methods remain open.  
  
Dear Diary:  
  
Damn the need for that blasted Nekoken. He went under again today. Still, he won't be a teenager forever. By the time he reaches his early twenties, he'll learn how to maintain humility as well as confidence simultaneously, and then I can remove that stupid fear-wrapper I had to place around the sealed techniques of the Nekoken.  
  
I was worried for a while that Shampoo's curse might help unravel the seal I made by acclimatizing Ranma to cats, and removing that psychosis-fear-lock that keeps the Nekoken sealed. Luckily she seems incapable of rational thought along those lines, and has actually reinforced the seal.  
  
Luckily, none of her stupid antics can prevent me from removing the lynch-pin to Ranma's fear complex when Ranma finally no longer needs it. My biggest worry is that something might happen to me, and the two backup methods of getting information to Ranma about the cures for all his curses when he turns 25 might both fail due to the amount of chaos involved. I've done what I can, and even if all those methods fail, if he runs into some of the masters I've taken Ranma to, they should be able to help.  
  
Dear Diary:  
  
I wish I'd planned to make Ryouga so pissed at Ranma, instead of just taking advantage of the situation after the fact. He provides a better object lesson on honor, rationalization, and responsibility for the far reaching effects of the simplest of actions, than I ever could with the bad examples I've contrived over the years.  
  
I even managed to convince Soun to keep the fact that her pig is really Ryouga from his daughters. I fed him some stupid line about how jealousy would drive Ranma into her arms, when any fool can see that he's a wedge between them.  
  
Ranma will eventually see the hypocrisy between blaming me for dunking him at Jhusenkyou, and resenting Ryouga blaming all of his problems on Ranma. Once he does that, I hope he realizes that while Honor requires someone to take responsibility for the far flung effects of an action, that a living being invariably inconveniences others by requiring space, sustenance, and resources that others could use.  
  
Humility arises out of accepting the responsibility for the myriad negative effects that any living being causes. While nobility arises through the struggle to do more good in the world to offset this inevitable slope of decay.  
  
Ranma will have to accept that Ryouga's curse was largely his fault, but that he had done nothing inherently wrong, besides not being as observant and empathic as he could have been. Eventually Ranma will hopefully strive for a greater harmony with his surroundings while accepting his shortcomings, without letting them freeze him into inaction.  
  
I've had to accept the amount of pain I've caused others in order to provide Ranma with the perfect bad example. People like Ukyou. Granted her father was the scum of the earth, and deserved all that I'd done to him, I've indirectly caused Ukyou more problems than a six year old deserved.  
  
I've always managed to fit the primary effect of my supposed bad character to rebound as a fitting punishment to someone else's crimes, but the secondary and tertiary effects were often beyond my control. And it was wrong of me to play judge for others to decide what their punishment should be.  
  
Luckily I've managed to do alot of good that was either never attributed to me, or looked like nothing more than bluster, accident, or defense of a foolish pride. Even while training under Happosai, I managed to derail some of his plans just as Ranma is derailing my worst depredations. Few things make me prouder than Ranma finding a loophole I never intended to leave, and using it to stop me from doing something bad in order to set an example for Ranma in how not to act in the future.  
  
Dear Diary:  
  
Ranma admitted it out loud to my face today that he hopes never to act the way I do. I'd take even more pride in this if I haven't been Cow-towing to that colossal excrescence Happosai. While he's forsworn acting like Happosai often in the past, it's not the same as Happosai's actions are so foreign to normal human behavior (after the age of six) that even the weakest willed people would say that.  
  
Ranma was expecting me to get mad, so I did. Playing the part of wounded nobility asking heaven where I went wrong. Ranma can't stand hypocrisy in others, but he's still as blind as the next person to his own hypocrisies.  
  
If I succeed in making him more introspective, I believe he'll endeavor to stomp as many of those out of himself, if only to avoid being as bad as I act.  
  
Dear Diary:  
  
Dammit. Nabiki caught me cheating at Go with Soun, and pointed out to everyone that by removing those three stones of Soun's I'd actually helped him better his position.  
  
It's hard enough making Soun win half the games, while making it look to Soun like it is his superior intellect that lets him win. Now I've got to pay attention to Nabiki and by extension Kasumi also.  
  
Everyone assumes that it was my dimwittedness that caused me to cheat in a way that helped Soun, Ignoring the fact that I've played for years, and Nabiki can count her games on her fingers. But if they notice that I'm doing this all the time, Nabiki will become suspicious.  
  
Soun, of course, credits his genius mind for spotting the openings I'm making for him, and pats himself on the back for winning in spite of my cheating. Luckily I get to occasionally sneak out for a pickup game in the park, or I'd loose my fourth Dan ranking (and I don't mean that stupid school of martial arts Go).  
  
Dear diary:  
  
Ranma's rough pattern of speech, teasing, and foot-in-mouth are causing Ranma to overcompensate when dealing with his fiancees. He's accepting punishment from his fiancees on the assumption that he deserves it even if he doesn't understand why. If this continues, I might have to take drastic action. One possible correction would be the stuterer's shiatsu point. It throws out of whack the physiometric feedback loop controlling the larynx and tongue.  
  
He would still be able to speak, but only slowly, and with marked concentration. Hopefully this will decrease the number of things he says that make him feel guilty, to the point where he realizes he's being beaten up for no reason. There are several problems with this plan, but none are insurmountable.  
  
Firstly, how to administer it. Even such a horrible father as I can't just walk up and do that to my son. I could loose a scroll, with the technique and an incorrect cure, where either Ryouga or Happosai would find it, but they are too unpredictable and incompetent to guarantee they'd succeed.  
  
Better to retitle it 'Pressure point of the considerate man', and let Akane deliver it to her loving fiancee. Nothing like pointing out that all of his fiancees wouldn't mind using mind-alterations to control him. If I do this, I'll leave out any mention of a counter point to cure him. Akane wouldn't bother to notice its lack until she decides to try to undo it.  
  
Alternately, I can just wait until the night after he has some big fight, and do it to him in his sleep, and let temporal coincidence blame the wrong party.  
  
Secondly there has to be some path for Ranma to try to recover the cure, even though at his rate of chi consumption he'll burn through the imbalance within a month or two. Or if I leave no hint of a cure, I must leak the information that it expires eventually, or Ranma will start being led by the nose by all of the opportunists. Cologne, Nabiki, and Happosai primarily.  
  
Thirdly, Ranma is now conditioned to accept punishment. Just because he stops making insults, doesn't mean he'll do anything to stop the 'punishments.' I'm looking forward to this problem's solution. It's pure Genma-baka. First I must bemoan how Ranma's always 'defeated' by Akane. This will feed her ego, but that can't be helped. I'll declare the uselessness of training my son when an untrained tomboy with a hammer can defeat him. That should get everyone to focus on me.  
  
Take Soun out that night and make sure he's sloshed while staying sober. That way he'll be too hung over the next morning to object when I start training Akane instead of Ranma. Throwing her out the window into the pond's a good start. Pointing out how she never objected when Ranma got defenestrated should make her guilty, which she'll transmute into anger.  
  
Ranma will try to defend Akane from me. I'll reiterate this is because he can't defend himself from a mallet. Ranma will be mad I'm attacking Akane, and mad because I'm ignoring and slighting him. Akane will be mad because she's soaking wet in her pajamas, mad I'm wiping the floor with her while I berate her amateur performance, and mad because Ranma will be trying to defend her. As Akane's rage has done nothing to help her defeat me, she'll clobber Ranma on general principle, which I'll take as justification to continue until Ranma defends himself from all of his fiancees.  
  
After the first morning spar, I'll deliver Soun a fait accomplis pointing out she survived the training he was too scared to do himself. After the first lesson, Soun won't be able to stop it. The best he can do is to claim Akane's not up to it, which will set daughter against father. Or rather Daughter's hypocrisy against father's hypocrisy. If Soun complains too much, I just have to sigh heavily at some meal, and say "Soun's right, there's no use training Akane. Little girls need their sleep and are too fragile to do any real sparring before breakfast."  
  
That should keep the morning fights going, even as I protest to Soun that I'm not doing anything.  
  
Dear diary:  
  
I think Ranma's beginning to work it out. It's obvious my taunting and fighting Akane was pulling his emotions in half a dozen different directions. He finally accused me of hypocrisy stuttering "You always said not to hit girls!"  
  
"Foolish boy!" I overacted, "Can't you tell the difference between using the art to attack girls like Happosai does, defending yourself from an upset non-combatant like Kasumi, or the stupid, irrational attacks of a martial artist unable and unwilling to control her anger?"  
  
This, of course caused Akane to charge at me over and over again, with me knocking her into the koi pond each time to try to cool her off. Finally, I had to knock her out to get her to stop.  
  
As expected, Soun flipped. Nabiki rubbed it into Akane over breakfast. "Well, you always said you wanted to be treated like a real martial artist." Ranma sulked, but it looked like he was thinking things through.  
  
Dear diary:  
  
Ranma let Akane mallet him again yesterday, so I woke Akane by throwing her into the koi pond again. Then there followed a rather pointless session where I made Akane furious, and then showed her how it made her sloppy, and easy to defeat.  
  
Ranma's not talking to me, Soun keeps wailing about how fragile his daughter is. Akane doesn't seem to know who she should be angrier with. I'm stealing Akane's food at meals, and ignoring Ranma's. Ranma's acting like I disowned him.  
  
Ranma no longer learns anything due to physical pain. A beginning student learns the correct way to fall to avoid the pain from falling correctly. The only things that motivate Ranma are insubstantial. Pride, embarrassment, and sad to say, emotional pain. Unfortunately, Ranma's learned the wrong way to deal with Akane to avoid the emotional pain she had been causing her, and it will require more pain from me to get him past this point.  
  
Dear diary:  
  
Success. Ranma destroyed Akane's mallet yesterday. You should have seen his expression this morning after I threw him into the koi pond instead of Akane. He didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or scream. Akane is acting carefully around Ranma, not knowing how he's going to react. She seems to have this idea in her head that the only thing that keeps her from being ravished on the spot is her meager skills as a martial artist.  
  
She needs psychological help I'm not qualified to give, and Soun refuses to admit anyone in his family needs outside help. Everyone in his family needs outside help, but there's precious little I can do unless they ask for it. What could I do to help Akane? Get some non-martial artist to seduce her? Anything I try is likely to do much more harm than good.  
  
She expected to either drive off the hordes of boys fighting her to go out with her superior skills, or to be rescued by some white knight. Instead she got my son, who refused on general principles to treat her like a princess. Now she's looking for a white knight to save her from Ranma and her father. If she had any brains, she'd learn Chinese and find out if the Amazons would adopt her away from her father. She'd be happier there.

* * *

This story has to have more entries, leading to the conclusion that Genma's bad behavior is intended to counteract Ranma's inherent stubbornness, and the urge for rebellion that hits all teenagers in one form or another.  
  
The idea is that Genma is constructing a Ranma with alot of rough edges with the intention of removing them later after they've served their purpose.  
  
The one thing I haven't touched at all, and which must be explained in order to make this story satisfactory, is what's Genma's interaction with Nodoka, and why did he marry her.  
  
The other thing I haven't touched is why Genma is going through this much trouble, but I think the story stands stronger for omitting it. Let the reader wonder if it's parental love, or grooming Ranma as an emperor's assistant, or some prophesy or future disaster.  
  
The idea I'd like to slip more of into the story is that Genma realized at an early age, that Ranma had no interest besides martial arts, and that alot of the problems Genma has created are to demonstrate how martial power cannot solve a whole host of problems. An explanation to a 4 year old that absolute power might not be enough, or even desirable is not going to work, but an object lesson where he could easily kill anyone in his way, and still not be able to solve a problem, should get Ranma to see the value of other things.  
  
Please comment, correct, rant, and if someone could rave. 


End file.
